


Humiliation

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Book 1: Game of Kings, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Glasgow, Music, Prompt Fill, attempted humiliation, backfires on will, rowdy audience, the band Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-27 00:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21382822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: This was meant to be a parallel to Threave but it just got silly. Will is not very good at these things.--Written for Whumptober 2019, set in the Band AU I've been writing (see collections).--There's 31 of these ficlets and I apologise profusely for burying other work in the tags. I will *always* tag these as 'the band au' and you can usethis nifty extension (ao3rdr)to block the tag if this isn't your thing and isn't what you want to see in the Lymond tags!
Kudos: 4
Collections: Ficlets in the Lymond Band AU for Whumptober 2019





	Humiliation

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr, October 25 2019.](https://notasapleasure.tumblr.com/post/188580074519/ah-he-smiled-the-techs-could-not-see-if-it)

“Ah.”

He smiled. The techs could not see if it reached his eyes, because they remained secure behind opaque shades. “None of them?”

They had to report that no, none of his band members had, in fact, reached the venue. Nor had their instruments.

The young master, the guitarist known as Lymond, who was followed everywhere by rumours of deception, destruction and dissidence, shrugged at this news. The sound technicians had heard that he would be difficult - they had anticipated outlandish rider requests, piques of fury and artistic imperiousness - so they struggled to respond to this calm equanimity. What could be more difficult than a pliant and generous star, willing to let the technicians make his decisions for him?

Lymond whipped off the sunglasses and the head technician flinched at the gesture, though the slack-lidded blue eyes were revealed to be perfectly lucid. “Well, I did begin as a solo artist. You have microphones, do you not?”

“Yes. Uh, yes.”

Lymond proceeded to explain his needs, and, astonished to find that they still had work to do, the sound technicians scurried into the dark recesses of stage and storage units to do as they had been commanded.

Meanwhile Lymond paced the empty boards, testing his voice on various sounds and lines of song, beckoning, one-armed to the empty venue for inspiration when a half-remembered line slipped from memory.

He was the picture of stern concentration, but would never normally have dropped even a half-line of a song he intended to perform imminently. His mind was distracted by thoughts of his band: Christian, Mat and Will. The latter was surely embroiled in some scheme to humiliate him; he must have pulled some trick to keep the others away. It would be just Will’s fancy to stand him up on stage before a packed crowd of neds and bored sectarians, to leave him unplugged and watch the unravelling of Dylan’s electric revolution occur in real time.

Will Scott was not a man of calm and level-headed proportion: too tall and too freckled, too prone to angry flushes for one with such carroty hair, he had also decided that the rumours concerning Lymond were true, and it was down to him to prove it. But if he thought he could undo the master by inviting him to introduce Glasgow’s youth to their acapella folk heritage, he thought wrong.

It was not an easy sell, to be sure. Lymond walked out to a crowd raucous with anticipation: a crowd that had, perhaps, come because of his reputation and not in spite of it. Ripped t-shirts and spiked hair rubbed up against spiked jackets and ripped arms. The majority male front rows - teeth bared, gathered around a roiling, restless pre-fight pit - roared as Lymond stepped on stage. They knew he could rock, even if they mistrusted his fey appearance; they wanted to see what the man who had survived the mob could do, and they wanted to learn from him.

“Owing to a wilful misunderstanding, the band will not be performing tonight,” Lymond said sweetly into the lone mic on stage. The crowd jeered, hopeful that this was a joke, and some chanted the lyrics to a popular chorus from Lymond’s previous album. “Instead you must make do with me.”

He started them off on drinking songs: the bawdier the better. A few old lads and lassies joined in, but the ceiling was hardly reverberating with it. Disgusted silence reigned in the front rows. Where were the guitars? Slowly at first, bottles began to rain down on stage. Lymond swayed casually to avoid them, yellow lashes low and stance that of a crooner caressing the mic stand. Then the pace of the projectiles increased, and the stranger items followed: boots and cassettes, punk costume jewellery and pennies.

“Now really, I’d prefer your underwear,” they were told as a knuckle-duster adorned with skull-and-crossbones grazed his cheek. Lymond picked it up and tried it on, flexing his long fingers.

A hoarse Glasgow voice shouted out: “Play some music, ye pansy!” and shortly afterwards a greying pair of boxer shorts drifted over the heads of the front rows and landed inelegantly on a monitor.

Lymond’s eyebrows fluttered minutely. “Oh dear. But without his plumage how will I distinguish one moon-faced arsehole from among a sea of them?”

The neds didn’t like learning new things, but none of them matched the stubbornness of the master. He braved the hail of objects and exchanged patter with them until respect was won, and finally, grudgingly, he had the room belting out The Old Dun Cow with him. Now was the time to press his advantage: he was determined to put them through the wringer in turn. Lymond stood proudly in a butter-yellow spotlight. His New Romantic make-up remained, as did the glitter in his blonde curls and the frilly-sleeved shirt (now spattered with wet stains), but the music he sang was pure, unfiltered emotion. He sang to them of drowned lovers and cruel mistresses, of friends betrayed and defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.

In the back of the venue, Will Scott seethed. This was meant to take the smug bastard down off his pedestal: he should have been squirming and cringing under the hail of piss-filled bottles and abuse. Instead he was making grown men tear up with songs about damp weans crossing rivers. The music journalists Will had invited, who had been promised a car-crash set of epic proportions, looked at him with understanding smiles. The would-be humiliation had been turned on its head.


End file.
